Butterfly bush is not good for butterflies. Sorry. You had good intentions. Leaves are supposed to fall on the ground. Otherwise we’d have no dirt and be standing on lava. Wood mulch is for walking paths and establishing new plants, not permanent ground cover. Would you ever visit a mulch garden? The most effective mulch is plants. Lawns are basically 1980s wall-to-wall carpet. And not in a fun vintage way. What’s the tackiest and most expensive lawn ornament? A yellow poison flag. Gas powered leaf blowers are going the way of the cigarette and lead paint, and will be really uncool with ..read more

This morning, I was fortunate to have a slice of time to sit on the porch with coffee before figuring out what to do with this mercifully rainy Sunday. A dude in a baseball cap walked by with his boxer in tow and seemed to shake his head disapprovingly at some offending thing in his line of vision—which was my front garden. He didn’t have earbuds in so he wasn’t responding to something beyond my earshot. His dog was behind him and not doing anything wrong, so it wasn’t directed at him. His gaze was definitely pointed at the general front line of my garden and the gesture seemed somehow obvious ..read more

You can’t write about plants for very long without hitting a cultural speed bump. I’ve hit many along the way. Most recently, I was writing about Monotropa uniflora popping up like creatures from the abyss in the woods. It was listed in our database as Indian pipe and I sent an email to our Plant Records Archivist that set off a quick cascade of decisions resulting in the official common name being changed to Ghost pipe. I have many examples of moments when we had to pan out and disrupt the status quo. And it’s not just about plant names, it’s the words we use to talk about plants and the stor ..read more

What was the last garden you visited? Public or private, big or small? Imagine yourself moving through that garden. If you are reading this, you are probably a gardener, and you probably know a lot about gardening and plants. As you move through that garden, imagine that all your gardening knowledge, the entire plant ID database in your head, all your knowledge of seasons and sun and shade and acid and riparian erosion control and xeriscaping and everything you know related to plants was erased from your head. And now imagine looking at the now nameless plants, the shrubs devoid of personality ..read more

It’s about time we stopped quoting John Muir and captioning our instagram posts with “The earth laughs in flowers” because Emerson wasn’t being romantic with the actual intention of that poem. Here is a list of voices and faces that deserve some voicetime and facetime. This list is a work in progress and it is ever-evolving. There are a few white dudes peppered in because they offer authentically good and useful words, so let’s include them. But let’s also be mindful of Restorative Representation (did I just make that up?) at the same time. One challenge in writing about gardens and gardening ..read more

This isn’t my story, but my sister told me this a long time ago so I feel like I have the right to appropriate it. When she was in art school, she went to a park with one of her sculpture classes. When they reached an open area, the teacher told everyone to gather sticks and place them in a big circle. When the circle was complete, she said, “you just made a space.” And with those words, the space inside the circle of sticks really did seem suddenly special or sacred. This was a lesson in positive and negative space, but beyond that, it is also about imparting meaning on a space. This is what ..read more

A while ago, we registered our yard for certification by the National Wildlife Federation. I did this for three reasons: 1) I wanted to normalize the act of conservation for my children. 2) I wanted to give my neighbors a visual statement that offered some explanation why my garden might look messy in contrast to the weedless golf courses and boxwoods pruned into boxes in some of the surrounding landscapes. And 3) I wanted to support The National Wildlife Federation. I also registered my garden with the Million Pollinator Gardens Challenge even though they surpassed their goal of 1 million ga ..read more

Here is a thing I think we need. And by “we” I probably mean me. And maybe a handful of people who care about the dirt around them and the things that grow in it. That thing is: Garden Therapy Affirmation Counselors. GTAC? You know that feeling of affirmation when someone else recognizes a special plant in your garden? Not just something charismatic and accessible, but something that is special because it has a purpose? It was put their with great intention by you and you went out of your way, far beyond some big box store, to put this special plant in that exact spot, that spot that is the cr ..read more

It’s midnight and I just got an email from Firefox with the subject “Keep that Weird Thing You Searched for Private.” Their bots must have detected my “weird” searches for “Did I lift my dahlia tubers too early,” “How do I find the eyes on my dahlia tubers,” “I think I dug up my dahlia tubers too early,” and “how to avoid stress eating at midnight because i dug up my dahlia tubers before they developed eyes.” It is early November and still no killing frost. It was a balmy October and the nights haven’t been cold enough to cast that withering pall over the garden. I had a window of opportunity ..read more

In mid-to-late October, you might see some ubiquitous tiny, white pompom flowers in a lot of part-shade woodland spots. It has probably popped up in your own garden. This is white snakeroot (Ageratina altissima) in the aster family. It was previously classified in the genus Eupatorium rugosum because of its resemblance to other Eupatoria like Bonesets and Joe Pye Weed. It is a native perennial that serves as the last remaining food source for lepidoptera and hymenoptera (butterflies and bees) in late Fall before winter hits. There is a variety called “Chocolate” Snakeroot recommended by our v ..read more